Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Bourdain loves the restaurant business for good and for ill: He has many fond memories of his career, but he does admit that restaurant work is its own sort of subculture and that not all its norms are positive. Although there will be some “screaming” chefs and tough-love bits of advice for diners who order their steaks well done and fish on Mondays, with this book, he also hopes to display restaurant workers’ work ethic and dedication to their jobs. He is aware that chefs get all the glory and that the rise of the celebrity chef, including the “Ewok-like Emeril Lagasse” (5), has shone an even brighter spotlight on those in charge. However, he intends this book to be about “street-level” cooking and to honor the hardworking line cooks, dishwashers, and other kitchen staff who are just as dedicated to good food and hard work as their bosses are.

The author traces his love of food to elementary school, specifically to the summer after fourth grade. He and his family took a trip to Europe, and he was served a cold soup. This was, to his young palate, a revelation. He recalls asking the waiter for its name, and although vichyssoise is now a staple in his kitchens, the word still gives him a slight thrill. 

The young Bourdain was impressed by the French custom of allowing teenagers watered-down wine and the occasional cigarette, but he found much of the food unimpressive. He disliked the “cheesy” taste of French butter and, to his parents’ chagrin, he and his brother consumed many hamburgers and Coca-Colas. Although they enjoyed Tintin comics, they were otherwise grumpy and listless. 

Fed up, their parents finally left them in the car for one of their more expensive meals, and that was a wake-up call for the author. The restaurant was La Pyramide, at the time the center of the French culinary world. Bourdain recalls realizing that food was special, and after that, he made a point to eat anything and everything he was served with gusto and to seek out strange and unusual foods like brains and “cheese that smelled like dead men’s feet” (13). When he and his family went to stay with his Tante Jeanne and Oncle Gustav on the coast, Bourdain had his first oyster. It was a life-changing experience. The taste was like nothing he’d ever experienced, and although he did not know at that exact moment that he wanted to cook professionally, looking back, he traces the beginning of his career to that first oyster.

Bourdain finishes high school in 1973. After a brief attempt at Vassar College, foiled by alcohol, substance use, and a general lack of interest, he moves to Provincetown, on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, with a group of friends. A friend helps him find a dishwashing job at the Dreadnaught, a local seafood restaurant, and although the work is tough and unglamorous, he loves it. The hours fly by as he scrubs pots and pans, cleans mussels, and de-veins shrimp. 

However, what he really loves are his co-workers: There is a lot of “bad behavior” in the kitchen. The cooks, whom he likens to pirates because of their uniform of ripped jeans, chef coats with the arms ripped off, sweaty bandanas, and gold earrings, swear constantly and drink throughout their shifts. They sleep with waitstaff, customers, and in one case, even the bride at a wedding party they were cooking for. He realizes that “[t]he life of a cook was a life of adventure” and understands that he has found his calling (22).

The restaurant business, however, is not just bad behavior and free-flowing alcohol—its focus is food. In Providence during the mid-1970s, food trends that are common today were non-existent. Bourdain recalls that much of the food, mainly seafood and red meat, was broiled and served with few accoutrements. Those simple preparations were executed to perfection, however, and the quality was high. 

One local chef, Howard Mitcham, took more time with his recipes and honored the local Portuguese population by using many traditional Portuguese recipes in his menus. Mitcham wrote several cookbooks that continued to influence Bourdain, but what he mostly recalls learning from Mitcham is how to cook for himself and love the food that he made. Although restaurant work is ultimately about the finished product, Bourdain would come to realize that the best chefs cook only in part because of their dedication to the customer. What truly motivates them is their devotion to the food itself. 

During Bourdain’s second summer at the Dreadnaught, he hopes to move up to the broiler station. At the end of his first summer, he’d taken the station over from someone who quit, and he loved it. The Dreadnaught, however, gets a new owner. The staff is nearly entirely replaced with Italians, who are unimpressed with Bourdain’s cocky attitude. He auditions for the broiler station but is rejected after asking for a bandage for a small burn. He spends that summer working on the prep station, one step up from dishwashing but still a far cry from the cooks he admires so much. 

At the end of the summer, he decides that the next step will be culinary school: He sets his sights on the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), a respected school in Hyde Park, New York, and is accepted.

As he drops out of Vassar College, Bourdain’s friends don’t understand his new direction. He doesn’t find CIA difficult because the first few courses cover material he learned working at the Dreadnaught. The curriculum features little nouvelle cuisine—which avoids heavy dishes and emphasizes fresh produce—and focuses on standard recipes like beef wellington. 

Many of Bourdain’s classmates are fresh out of high school, and he relishes outperforming them in the kitchen, selling them drugs after class, and taking their money during nightly poker games. Although he finds much of the cooking easy and has an increasing amount of disdain for many of his classmates, Bourdain admits that many of the instructors are the “real deal.” They have years of experience in some of the world’s best kitchens and excel in their craft. Many of them have difficult personalities, however; students often cry in their classes, and everyone dreads the course in which they will be taught to prepare soufflés. Bourdain outperforms everyone, and by the time he graduates, he feels unstoppable.

Bourdain returns to the Dreadnaught the following summer “to much curiosity and amusement” (45). His head is full of “half-baked” techniques, and he is sure that his education equals superiority over his colleagues in terms of both skill and culinary knowledge. Although many members of the staff find his arrogance humorous, he is aware that he is a better worker, and he notes the grudging respect he is given by the experienced staff when he shows that he is now capable of handling a station. 

One cook in particular, Dmitri, becomes a mentor for the young Bourdain. Dmitri is talented, driven, and exacting in his standards. He is also a free-wheeling, hard-drinking man whom Bourdain likens to a young Hemingway. Dmitri is the only other person in the kitchen with a culinary degree, and the two bond over their cooking skills, their love of alcohol and drugs, and their culinary snobbery. They decide to open a catering business, and although they initially alienate potential customers with their arrogance, they ultimately land a few jobs throwing end-of-season parties. Their work goes mostly smoothly, but there are some near-disasters that they avert by turning to Julia Child’s tried-and-true recipes. At the end of the summer, they set their sights on New York City.